Saturday, June 09, 2007

Our Litigious Planet...

Let's say you are wronged. What to do? You sue! And suing, though perhaps justified in many cases, gums up the fabric of society, and puts a lawyer's mentality at the root of our being by turning our every footstep into a potentially litigious matter. Things get awfully snide. Who wants to live in that world? What small measures can be taken to deflate this scourge on our planet?

A nice man at a party last night was talking to Sarah and I about how certain progressive internet business models work in terms of copyright lawsuits and file sharing. Basically, the company regularly puts aside a portion of its income into an escrow account where it accrues interest over time. When Joe Smith accidentally surfs across his college thesis film (on say, a You Tube like web site), he is, of course, the rightful owner of that work and entitled to any profits that may have been generated as a result of that usage. So, the progressive but technically wrong-doing company owns up to the error and says, yes, you are entitled to a small amount of money, which you will have to sue us in order to get. Or, if you do not choose to sue us, we will give you a slice of the profit sharing pie which continues to grow as does our revenue, end of story. In other words, doing nothing is better than suing - the more nothing, the more money you earn, without the nasty headache and cultural side effects of suing... Oh, I've explained this all pretty badly haven't I... Don't get an economics lesson at a party and try to spit it out sensibly the next morning...